Selfless Humility – A Beatitude Devotional

Posted on February 5, 2018

A lack of humility tells you a lot about people. It tells you that they don’t understand that they are a part of something bigger. It tells you that they don’t recognize the contributions and value of others. It tells you they overestimate their own importance. And most of all it tells you that they aren’t looking any further than their own benefit. The opposite of humility may be pride, but often the cause of not being humble is selfishness.

Jesus calls us to a radical kind of selfless humility; the same kind of humility that He demonstrated. Just as He set aside the privilege and power of His position and became one of us, we need to be willing to set aside privilege and power, remembering that we are not better than those around us. Just as He took the lowest place, of a servant, washing His disciples’ feet, we should take lowly jobs with joy, knowing that we are never more like Jesus than when we are serving others. And just as Jesus put our needs above His own desires by dying for us on the cross, we should be willing to give up our desires in order that others’ needs may be fulfilled.

John the Baptist knew how to do just that. He knew that his purpose was to set up Jesus to succeed. What John’s disciples saw as a failure, he recognized as success. He knew that if people were repenting and coming closer to God, then his purpose was being fulfilled even if it wasn’t directly through him. John didn’t want the spotlight. He wanted the message to be heard. We have a choice. We can be like John’s disciples, selfishly wanting our own way and our own reward, or we can choose to be like John, concerned not with whether our position is advancing, but whether the message of Jesus is advancing.“Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.” Philippians 2:3-8 (NLT)

“God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.” Matthew 5:5 (NLT)